ZW 2012 Day 3 Transcend: Going Nowhere
by Lilako
Summary: Katara helps Zuko overcome his reluctance to be Fire Lord, as well as come to terms with his feelings towards his new friends - including his budding feelings for a certain waterbender. My entry for Zutara Week 2012 Day 3, Transcend.


"Life should be measured not by how many breaths you take, Fire Lord Zuko, but by how many moments take your breath away – and this walk is surely doing the trick!" Iroh chuckled at his own joke as they continued to ascend the slope.

"Stop calling me that, Uncle. I told you, I want you to take it."

They finally reached the hilltop, Iroh pulling a key from his sleeve to unlock the gilded doors before them. "I don't know if I can take this walk every day," he said, ignoring his nephew.

"You wouldn't have to if you became Fire Lord."

Iroh gripped his chin in thought and stared up at the peeling walls. "I'll have to commission a painter. This wallpaper is atrocious!"

Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. This was going nowhere.

Before Sozin's Comet, Iroh had told Zuko that he would have to become Fire Lord and restore honor to the Fire Nation. He'd agreed to avoid an argument – after all, he had half expected to be fried to a sizzle crisp when he went to fight Azula; there had been no guarantee he'd even be alive to take the throne.

But the comet had come and passed and now Zuko didn't know what else he could do but beg his uncle to rescind his abdication. Iroh was older, wiser, and knew what he was doing; Zuko would be lost as Fire Lord. What if he ran the country into the ground? What if he screwed up? Zuko always screwed up.

"Uncle, this is serious. Do you have any idea how many lives this is going to affect?"

"Geez, Zuko," his uncle said, sounding hurt, "the wallpaper isn't _that _bad."

Zuko smashed his head into said wallpaper, steam issuing from his nostrils.

This was going _nowhere._

A week later, time was running out. Zuko was recovering slowly from what Sokka referred to as his _shocking experience_– and soon enough he would be expected to take his place…his uncle's place, as Fire Lord.

He couldn't let that happen.

"Hey Fire Lord," a cheerful voice said, pulling him out of his reverie.

"Oh, not you too," he groaned as Katara unwrapped his bandage and began to heal the now-scarring wound on his chest.

Katara smirked. "What's wrong with calling you Fire Lord, _Fire Lord_?"

"Everything."

Katara rolled her eyes and continued to heal the wound he'd taken for her.

Later that day Zuko brought the gang to Iroh's new teahouse. Toph demanded that he carry her up the hill, which Katara immediately shot down given his current condition (to which Sokka immediately responded with _"Current condition. Haha, geddit? Current?"_). Sokka, bringing up the rear on his crutches, complained and asked why Zuko couldn't carry _him_up the hill.

Zuko would miss this, he decided, if he were forced to be Fire Lord. He had finally found people that accepted him as he was. He didn't want to lose that.

"Ah, nephew! Excellent timing! The tea has just finished brewing." Iroh ushered the group into the tea shop.

Iroh had decided that such a young Fire Lord would need help running a country, and that he wouldn't be able to assist in any way from Ba Sing Se. So he packed up his tea leaves and opened his own shop in the Caldera.

"It is a beautiful thing," Iroh was telling Katara, who was listening politely, "and is meant to be sipped delicately." He took such a sip to demonstrate. "Ahh, the joys of peach and lychee tea…"

"A hundred years ago there was this tea shop in Kirachu. It had the best chai tea, do you have any of that?"

"Oh, of course. Fire Lord Zuko, get the kettle from the counter there for Aang's chai."

Ignoring the honorific, Zuko grabbed the kettle and turned to bring it to the table, but the steam issuing from the spout had made the handle slick with condensation and the kettle slipped from his grip. Boiling water, so hot it felt cold against his skin, poured against him. The still raw wound on his chest ignited, and it felt like being shot with lightning again.

"Agh!" His jaw locked as the room went spinning.

"Zuko!" cried a half dozen voices, and then his uncle said "Get him in the back room, there's a cot-"

And then he was lying down on a length of canvas. Warm hands encased in cool liquid clasped themselves against his chest and began to glow. Relief flooded in, and Zuko let out an involuntary sigh.

"There," she said, as the pain receded further.

They stayed like that for time immeasurable until the effects of the scalding water left his body. Katara's hands began to droop with fatigue.

"You can stop," Zuko said more gently than he'd meant to. "Really Katara, it's better. You should rest."

"You can't order me around, Fire Lord." She smirked and continued her healing session.

"It wasn't an order. It was a request."

"Oh?" Her quirked eyebrow mocked him from just out of his reach. "And since when does the almighty Fire Lord _request _that his peasants do anything?"

"Does that mean you're my peasant?" he shot back, then blushed as the unintended implications behind his retort caught up to him. "I mean, uh…you're not a peasant."

She laughed, a genuine, happy laugh that made her eyes light on fire and Zuko felt a small, hesitant smile of his own bloom at the sight. "Whatever you say, Fire Lord."

"….I really wish you wouldn't call me that."

Katara's hands paused in their healing. "Why not?"

"Because I don't want to be Fire Lord!" His voice held more fire than he'd meant it to, and he continued more gently. "I'm not cut out for this."

"But this is what you've been waiting for. You've wanted this your whole life."

"Maybe I don't want it anymore. Maybe I don't know what I want."

"What are you talking about?"

Zuko decided not to answer. He hated feeling so small, so vulnerable, so he closed himself off to the feeling and thought to change the subject.

But Katara put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture with a million meanings and words implied. _I know. I understand. I'm here for you. It's okay. _And just like that his words were pulled from his throat, as he suspected only a waterbender could do.

"All my life… I've been directed, I've been told to do what other people wanted me to do. I've been born into this position and now I'm forced to fill it. I feel…trapped.

"I don't want to do this."

Katara looked at him through serious blue eyes as she breathed, "Why not?"

Memories flooded him, oppressing in their weight. The palace. The war room. His mother, his father. His ambitious sister. Greedy politicians, fending only for themselves and whatever power they had managed to secure…

A fire under the stars, sleeping in the grass with his former enemies. Falling to his death, only to be caught before he left the sky by someone who (however grudgingly) cared for him – the first time he'd ever been able to depend on someone other than his Uncle. Sparring in the moonlight, eating Katara's cooking, dancing with Aang and Ran and Shaw in an inferno of color.

There were countless reasons Zuko did not want to be Fire Lord, but two very clear ones set themselves apart from the rest in his mind.

"I'll be a horrible Fire Lord," he said finally, averting his gaze.

Katara's hands went still and the healing water splashed down onto his chest, but she didn't seem to notice. "That's ridiculous. Of course you'll be a great Fire Lord."

"Yeah. Right. I'm going to ruin the country. I'll burn it to the ground. This peace, it won't last a century with me on the throne. People will see how incapable I am of governing a country and they'll incite a riot. They-"

"Zuko. That's ridiculous. You're-"

"-and I'll be known as the worst Fire Lord in Fire Nation history! I'll-"

"Zuko."

"-don't know what my uncle was thinking, I-"

The water lifted from his chest and splashed into his face, leaving him sputtering.

"What was that for?" he half shouted, shaking water out of his eyes.

"You're going to be a great leader." Zuko scoffed so she continued, saying, "I'm serious! I know you will be."

"Yeah? Your ability to see the future is _astounding_. Tell me, Aunt Wu, how do you do it?"

Katara paused in her pre-inspirational speech-preparation mode and looked at him in happy surprise. "How do you know Aunt Wu?"

"Don't remind me." If he had a choice between making himself as vulnerable as he was right now, and discussing his uncle's love life, he would always choose the former.

Shrugging, Katara continued in her pre-speech pep talk. "I know you'll be a great Fire Lord. I know because I know you.

"You think you won't be a good leader, but that's wrong. You're worried that you won't be good enough for your people – doesn't that show how much you care about them? You're worried about whether you'll be able to run a country. Doesn't that show how dedicated you are to it? How seriously you take your responsibilities? You've lived as a peasant before. What other Fire Lord in the history of the Fire Nation has done that? You'll have a connection, an understanding of your subjects that no other Fire Lord has ever had before. So tell me, _Fire Lord_ – what makes you think you won't be the _best _Fire Lord?"

Zuko fought down the ember of hope that had ignited in his chest. Whether he knew the people's problems or not, that didn't change the fact that he had no idea how to run a country, or that he was going to be a horrible ruler.

"Why else?"

"Huh?"

"Why else don't you want to be Fire Lord?"

Zuko clenched his jaw shut. It was one thing to tell a friend his doubts.

It was quite another to admit to weakness.

"There is no other reason."

Katara rolled her eyes, an easy smile spreading across her face. "Okay, here's a tip. Don't try lying to anyone once you're Fire Lord. You're horrible at it."

Zuko groaned inwardly and resigned himself to the truth. At least Katara was worthy of his trust, and somehow she always knew what to say. He decided he owed her at least this much.

"I don't want this to end."

Katara did the hand-on-his-shoulder thing again and he swore to Agni, dragged the answer from his mouth. "I've never had this before. Feeling like, like I belong... And now that I know what that feels like, I can't lose it."

"You'd miss us," Katara said in realization, in understanding.

"Yes. I'm going to miss you. All of you. As stupid as it sounds I almost miss the way it was during the war..."

"Well, what about Sokka?"

Zuko looked up, thrown off by the change in subject. "What about him?"

"Well, as you know, he has a certain love for food..."

"And?"

"And how do you expect to tell him that he has to leave the Fire Nation? I think he's gotten rather fond of the palace kitchens."

Zuko quickly cottoned on. "And...and Aang. He still hasn't mastered firebending. And what better place to learn that the Fire Nation?"

"Exactly! And Toph. You don't think she'd let you send her back to her parents, do you?"

"Of course not. She could stay in the palace."

"So that settles it. You'll be a perfect Fire Lord, and-"

"What about you?"

Katara placed her hand on his shoulder a third time - he was starting to get used to the comfort in its weight - and looked him in the eye.

"Don't worry Zuko. I'm not going anywhere."

And as Katara finished her healing session, Zuko decided he was okay with that.


End file.
